Members of a rural electric cooperative which includes some Park County residents will hold its 78th annual meeting on Sept. 24, at the high school in Roberts, Mont.

The business meeting will convene at 9 a.m. and adjourn at noon. This annual meeting is an opportunity for Beartooth Electric Cooperative members to get an update on how the co-op stands and where it is headed.

Beartooth Electric Cooperative, Inc. (BEC) attorney Larry Martin made it clear to all the board via a phone conference on Tuesday, August 28, should a merger occur with Lower Valley Energy, Inc. (LVE) and members are dissatisfied, they cannot regroup as BEC again. "You can't go back. Once you merge there is no more BEC. It will be swallowed up by LVE," he clarified. "If you wanted to leave it would be subject to what Wyoming law required (where LVE is incorporated)."

Red Lodge, MT – On September 24, members of the rural electric cooperative will hold their 78th annual Members Meeting at the high school in Roberts, Montana. The business meeting will convene at 9:00 a.m. and adjourn at noon.

On Tuesday, July 26, the Beartooth Electric Cooperative, Inc. (BEC) board received an independent review regarding its current management. It is the first crucial step since leaving Southern Montana Electric Transmission and Generation Cooperative, Inc. since it is now an independent cooperative with Montana and Wyoming members that can determine its own future. The report found that the current arrangement with Lower Valley Energy (LVE) contracted as management is “working quite well.”

Beartooth Electric Cooperative, Inc. has survived many perils in the Southern Montana Electric Transmission and Generation Cooperative, Inc. (Southern) bankruptcy managing to finally extricate itself. Now, its current state and energy sources being secure, it is deciding its future path: whether to stand alone like many rural Montana cooperatives or to become instead a smaller member in a larger cooperative on which it would simply sit as a board member(s).

Red Lodge, MT – A reduction in electric rates was approved by the Beartooth Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees at their regular meeting on July 26. The rate decrease, effective August 1, marks the third cut-back in co-op members’ rates since August of 2015.

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